Hence it is that blue-stocking women are proverbially avoided by men; not because men despise or dislike their learning, but because they make such ill-timed use of it. They may be admired, but they are never loved; they may talk as learnedly as is in their power, but learning never won a lover, much less a husband. _Ver. sap._ my dear lady reader, and if you don’t understand the abbreviate, ask—ask—anybody, but your husband. “Yes, Love, indeed, is light from heaven, A spark of that immortal fire, By angels shared, to mortals given, To lift from earth our low desire.” And shall heaven-born love bow to mortal wisdom? Shall the God whom Jove himself obeys, become the slave of Minerva? No! let Love wear the cap and bells of Folly, but shroud him not in the cold cerements of the Goddess of Wisdom! Be assured, the doves of Venus will never nestle under the dusky wings of the sage owl of _innupta_ Minerva, who, herself, could never win a husband, or a lover, from the whole host of Olympus. Whatever the cause, it is almost indisputable that women’s characters are generally less developed than those of men; and this fact accurately accords with the usual development of their Noses. But for a small _hiatus_ in the prosody, Pope’s line would read equally well thus:— “Most women have no Noses at all.” Not, of course, that the nasal appendage is wanting, any more than Pope intended by the original line that women’s characteristics were wholly negative; but that, like their characters, their Noses are, for the most part, cast in a smaller and less developed mould than the Nose masculine. In judging of the Nose feminine, therefore, comparison must not be made with the masculine, but with other feminine Noses. All the rules and classifications apply to the one as well as the other, but allowance is to be made for _sex_. The Roman Nose largely developed in a woman mars beauty, and imparts a hardness and masculine energy to the face which is unpleasing, because opposed to our ideas of woman’s softness and gentle temperament. In a man we admire stern energy and bold independence, and can even forgive, for their sakes, somewhat of coarseness; but in a woman the former are, at the least, unprepossessing and unfeminine, and the latter is utterly intolerable. Woman’s best sustainer is a pure mind; man’s a bold heart.